Sea Room

Everyone dreams of owning an island, but very few people ever do. Hollywood actors have purchased Pacific hideaways and millionaires set themselves up on outcrops in the Caribbean, but for ordinary mortals the dream usually remains unrealized. Adam Nicolson is the exception. He doesn't just own an island. He owns three. In the 1980s, aged 21, he inherited the tiny Shiants from his father, who had bought them 50 years earlier at the bargain price (even then) of ?1400. Nobody lived there, and the only dwelling was a dilapidated rat-infested house where Nicolson's wife still refuses to sleep. The Shiants are not palm-fringed and sun-soaked; they sit in the cold seas off the Outer Hebrides, and their geography is bleak. They are surrounded by mighty cliffs, home to razorbills and puffins. Seals play in the frothing seas. Yet Nicolson, like his father before him, believes they are one of the most beautiful places on the planet. The book opens defensively; Nicolson realises that absentee English landlords are not popular in the Hebrides. But he manages to convince the local Hebrideans, his readers and himself that the islands are his in name only. They are, in a sense, independent, continuing to survive in the fierce swell whoever's name is on the land deeds. With great affection and minute detail, he takes us over every nook and cranny of the islands - their unforgiving geology, their wildlife, their modest place in history and legend. Mirroring the unfolding of the islands' life is Nicolson's own personal history, from young man to husband and father. The result is a poetical, romantic homage to a remote place, told from the heart. Even if few of us can live the dream of owning our own Lilliputian kingdom, at least in this book we can read about it. Review by Dea Birkett (Kirkus UK)